Harris v Trump: What deadlocked poll reveals about race for White House

Washington: It’s been nearly two weeks since the first US presidential debate, and the polls have reached their verdict on the fallout: the race remains very close.

On average, Vice President Kamala Harris is faring about 1 point better across 34 polls that measured the race before and after the debate. It leaves the contest deadlocked, with neither candidate enjoying a meaningful advantage in the key states.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris walks over to speak to members of the media upon her arrival at Andrews Air Force Base on Sunday.Credit: AP

By the usual measures, this is a small post-debate bounce. In fact, it is the smallest bounce for the perceived consensus winner of the first presidential debate so far this century. George W. Bush, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and, yes, Donald Trump earlier this year, all peaked with gains of at least 2 points after their debates.

One possible reason for the smaller bounce is the second assassination attempt on Trump, though it’s worth noting that most of the polls out this week – including an NBC News poll showing Harris up 5 points nationwide – were still mostly taken before the news.

On the other hand, the latest New York Times/Siena College polls of the key Sun Belt battlegrounds were taken entirely after the assassination attempt, and they suggest Harris may be faring worse there – though it’s too early to say.

Another possible reason is that America is more polarised than ever.

Many voters’ views of Trump, in particular, are all but baked in as he runs for a third time.

In addition, many more pollsters today use statistical adjustments – like controlling the make-up of the sample by party identification or how respondents say they voted in the last election – that tend to reduce how much the results swing from week to week.

Republican presidential nominee former president Donald Trump visits Sprankle’s Neighbourhood Market in Kittanning, Pennyslvania. Credit: AP

Still, it’s not as if the polls have been perfectly stable over the last two months since Harris’ entry into the race.

In late July and August, she made steady gains. Those gains seem to have slowed, suggesting she’s mostly consolidated her potential support.

Any additional gains won’t be easy. If even a consensus debate victory can’t move the needle, it’s hard to see what would give either candidate a meaningful edge in the polls over the final stretch.

Here’s where things stand with six weeks to go.

The state of the race

Overall as of Sunday night, Harris leads by 3 points nationwide, according to the Times’ polling average, 50 per cent to 47 per cent. As mentioned, that’s about 1 point higher than it was before the debate.

The race is even closer in the key battleground states, with neither candidate leading by 3 percentage points or more in any of the seven states likeliest to decide the presidency.

If the polls were to stay this tight until November, it would be the first election since 2004 when the polls were this close in the pivotal states.

Even so, the post-debate polls do show Harris with a slender edge. Over the past week, more than a dozen high-quality polls were released in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and nearly every one showed Harris tied or ahead.

Harris’ best news came in Pennsylvania, the largest and most important battleground state. There, eight pollsters we label “select,” meaning higher-quality, found Harris ahead, on average, by 2.5 points.

The news was somewhat better for Trump in Wisconsin, where polls from Marist and Quinnipiac found Harris ahead by only 1 point.

Taking all the polls together, Harris leads by 1 to 2 points in each of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a group that is a key pathway to victory.

What if the polls are wrong?

Of course, an edge of 1 to 2 points isn’t much of a lead at all.

Even in a great year for pollsters, such a lead is tenuous at best, especially with six weeks to go. And it’s been a long time since pollsters could unequivocally say they had a “great” year, especially in these states.

If the polls are as wrong as they were in 2020 or 2022, the result could be very different. Either candidate could claim a decisive victory.

Is there any reason to assume that the polls will be so wrong again? No, not necessarily.

And while it might only be a false sense of security, the similarity between the current polling averages and the 2020 election result makes another enormous error seem less likely.

It doesn’t feel realistic to imagine Trump winning Wisconsin by 8 points, for instance. But it didn’t feel realistic back in 2016 to imagine him winning Wisconsin at all. Unexpected things happen.

The bottom line, however, is simple: The polls are so close that there’s no clear favourite. It would be no surprise if either candidate won. And if the polls haven’t moved much in the wake of Harris’ debate victory, it’s fair to wonder whether they will ever show a clear favourite.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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